The Switch 2 is one year old, and it's had quite the first 12 months of life. It was, perhaps, not as flashy or overwhelmingly exciting as its older sibling's first year, a fact some persistent voices in Nintendo communities have loudly pointed out since June 6, 2025. From time to time, you'll still hear variations of "The original Switch had a 3D Zelda game and a 3D Mario game! Nintendo expects us to pay nearly $500 just for a mediocre Mario Kart and Donkey Kong!?" Those comparisons have the basics right (though Mario Kart World is better than its reputation), but they overlook important pieces of context and take a rose-tinted view of the Switch's first year.

Nintendo had a lot to prove when the Switch launched in March 2017, both to consumers and to its publishing partners. The Wii U was a commercial failure, selling only 13.56 million units in its lifecycle, and before The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launched, Nintendo hadn't released a well-received first-party game for years. In other words, Nintendo had little choice but to lead the Switch lineup with the marquee franchises, if the company wanted to regain trust. But between those big launches, the Switch's first year was far from being a glitzy parade of Nintendo's finest.

Though not often remembered now, one of Nintendo's big marketing talking points at the Switch's launch and shortly after was a promise that at least one non-indie game would launch for the system every month in the first year. The seven months between Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey were filled with spinoffs, like Fire Emblem........

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